Women Know It For A Fact: If Men Are Different, Men Are Wrong.

January 28, 1987|By Tom Naughton. The author is a Chicago writer.

All women know the toilet seat`s proper position is down. Some women even believe there was once an 11th Commandment, ``Thou shalt leave the toilet seat down,`` but Moses scratched it from the tablet to avert a riot.

This misguided notion is only the most obvious example of a widespread mental condition known as Toilet Seat Syndrome. Simply put, TSS is the belief that whenever men and women behave differently, it`s because there`s something wrong with men.

Look at the conflict that gives Toilet Seat Syndrome its name. I`ve asked women why they take a left-up toilet seat as a personal offense. ``Because I don`t like to touch it. It`s gross,`` they say. I agree. Our mothers taught us that public toilet seats are riddled with poisonous protozoans that can eat their way through anything except a covering of toilet paper, and there`s no reason to assume home toilet seats are much safer.

``If the seat is up, I drop that extra inch and go into shock,`` women say. Don`t you look before you leap? I ask. ``At 2 a.m.? I`m barely awake!``

Right; so am I. Yet I`m expected to have enough mental presence to raise the seat, or I get a bottle of toilet cleaner thrown at me the next morning.

In fact, I`m expected to both raise the seat and lower it again--twice as complicated as the operation women say they can`t perform at 2 a.m. Yet women go on insisting that leaving the seat up is a selfish, obnoxious and generally insensitive act.

Was it as good for . . . zzzz

This attitude has spread until women are convinced that all typically male behavior results from rudeness or arrested development. Take falling asleep after sex. Women are sure this proves men care only about physical satisfaction.

Actually, men fall asleep after sex because nature, in the form of a hormone, tells them to. This was a way of protecting women in prehistoric (and pre-Alan Alda) days, when men used to woo them with clubs. Nature allowed women to escape unwanted common-law marriages by knocking men silly with hormones after sex.

Nature has been slow to respond to civilization, so modern men still suffer from this sleep response. Yet women say we`re not sensitive because we can`t stay awake and answer important questions like, ``Why are you attracted to me? Do I remind you of your mother? Does the hairy mole on my back bother you?``

In fact, women deluded by TSS are always trying to get men to talk about their feelings. Apparently women believe our parents, lacking the benefits of `70s pop psychology, inadvertently stunted our emotional growth. If only we`d been given dolls to nurture instead of toy trucks to bang on the coffee table, we`d willingly open our verbal floodgates--and be happier for it.

Can we not talk?

Phooey. Practically from birth, little girls are more verbal and little boys are more physical. So as adults, unhappy women go to therapists, while unhappy men go duck hunting. The point is, talking isn`t necessarily the key to serenity. I know some Eastern mystics who are deliriously happy, but they are allowed to utter only three words a year.

To make it worse, some women want us to do more than talk. I recently saw a woman`s magazine with a cover blurb that read: How to Make a Man Cry. A case of TSS if I ever saw one. I don`t like to cry. It makes my face wet and stuffs up my nose. But there it is, an article that probably tells women that if a man is made to cry he`ll become a better lover, learn to make pesto and stop watching Monday Night Football.

How did Toilet Seat Syndrome develop? I believe it`s an overextension of feminism. While the women`s movement was much needed to convince both sexes that women are equal to men, some feminists went too far and decided that women are downright superior. After all, the powerless have historically comforted themselves by looking upon the powerful and saying, ``Sure, they`re in control. But we`re better people. If we were in control, we`d be fair and nice and wouldn`t start wars`` (Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi notwithstanding).

Making a moral splash

So several years ago some women began telling each other that men are thick-headed, selfish and barbarous. (This was known as ``consciousness-raising.``) Before long, they had convinced an alarming proportion of their ranks that any distinctly male behavior was rooted in moral inferiority. Thus, even such inconsequential acts as leaving the toilet seat up took on moral aspects.

Women are free to write books telling their sisters how to take an ordinary man and turn him into a better person--by making him act more like a woman. But what if a man wrote books detailing how to make women clam up about their feelings, shun commitments and fall asleep after sex? He would be burned in effigy at the next NOW convention. He`d be accused of advocating female slavery. He`d be forced to answer probing questions by Phil Donahue.

Enough, I say. Let`s call a truce and stop trying to change each other. If I fall asleep, don`t press your cold toes against my calves and snap,

``Hey! You awake?`` Don`t try to induce tears by asking about the time my puppy died.

And if you use the bathroom at 2 a.m., do me a favor. Put the damned seat back up where it belongs. --